This was inevitable. AdMob founder and CEO Omar Hamoui has responded to Apple blocking AdMob from the iOS ecosystem. Unsurprisingly, Hamoui isn't particularly amused, claiming that not only is it bad for competition, it will also hurt developers and users alike.

I don't get the deal.
Google isn't allowing alternative advertising agencies to handle ads on Google Search either. It's all Google's own ads.
Why would Google allow competing ad providers on their own websites? Why should Apple make an exception for Google's AdMob when Google makes none as well?

If I make a website I would to display the same ads regardless of the viewers platform.

An you can. Non-Flash based Google's ads will still display on web sites, but then there's even technology being developed to allow Flash ads to happen as we saw the other day. This is where the g00ks are muddying the waters to confuse people. What we're talking about is IN APP ads, not web site ads. If you want to put Google ads on your web site they will still be displayed on the iPhone. This is NOT about web advertising as some would want you to believe, this is about IN APP advertising.

So again, if Apple want to put those restrictions on development tools that they create it's their prerogative. People don't have to develop for the iPhone, people don't have to buy an iPhone. If you CHOOSE to do either you know UP FRONT what you are getting into because you are presented with T&C's and / or a License Agreement. Unlike Google where you don't get asked shit, they just take what they want and do whatever they like with it.

Google's services are covered by terms and conditions just as Apple's are. Saying this is not the case is lying. Google also has clear privacy policies anyone can look up, and they make it ridiculously easy to migrate away from things like Gmail. On top of that - almost all of Google's products are open source, and you can strip out all the Google-specific stuff (see Chromium-Chrome).

This is not possible with Apple's stuff. With Apple, you can't check the source code to see if Apple is telling the truth - you mostly can with Google.

Of course, Google being a company, they must be closely monitored, and luckily, they are. The Street View thing was bad (as I wrote here on OSN), and if criminal intent was there, they better be punished for it.

Unfortunately that example doesn't really make sense to me. Your analogy would be relevant if Apple said that Apple first party applications are not going to use AdMob. Which is of course just fine.

The iOS SDK is a first-party Apple product.

It's not as if Safari won't display any ads by Google AdSense/DoubleClick.
Safari is increasingly compatible to HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, and such. Writing applications using those technologies should be of no problem. Not only would those be compatible with Android as well (Android's default browser is also WebKit-based and should be equally compatible if based on a similar timed WebKit snapshot), you could use all sort of ad providers.

I don't get the deal.
Google isn't allowing alternative advertising agencies to handle ads on Google Search either. It's all Google's own ads.
Why would Google allow competing ad providers on their own websites? Why should Apple make an exception for Google's AdMob when Google makes none as well?

Because Google's website is Google's application.
And likewise if Google wrote an application for the iPhone Google should choose how to display ads in that specific iPhone app.

I can understand Apple recommending their own ads. I can even understand Apple adding features to make their ads more preferable (better integrated APIs etc) - though even that is straying dangerously towards MSs territory of old (ie how MS app's integrated with Windows better than 3rd party apps because of unpublished APIs)

What I can't agree with is Apple dictating how 3rd party developers build 3rd party applications. Particularly when Apple have "opened" up the device with the illusion that developers are "free" to make a living from it.

What _really_ gets me is the "what applies to you, doesn’t apply to us" part.

"any advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent"

No, you are missing the point. The above poster said nothing about monopoly. He's trying to say the typical, "I own it, I can do whatever I want with it," line -- suggesting that its the developers who have a right to determine who can and cannot be on apple's platform. Well, he used an analogy for that. One that proved the opposite of his point. People buy property every day which comes with terms that say they cannot do whatever they want with their own property.

No, you are missing the point. The above poster said nothing about monopoly. He's trying to say the typical, "I own it, I can do whatever I want with it," line

Really? I could have sworn he was simply saying that Apple tells you that nobody else's dog can shit on your lawn... anyhow, not important.

suggesting that its the developers who have a right to determine who can and cannot be on apple's platform.

Would be nice if the user could indicate who can/can't shit on the lawn, no? What good does it do the user to allow Apple to dump ads on them, but not Google.

Well, he used an analogy for that. One that proved the opposite of his point. People buy property every day which comes with terms that say they cannot do whatever they want with their own property.

Actually, most HOAs (what we call them where I live) are made up of a board of actual home owners who represent the community's interests. Usually these individuals get together and vote on the rules - and they are usually the same people who will benefit from the rules. Often times, these members are the more controlling individuals in the community, especially the older, retired ones who have nothing better to do other than tell others what they can/can't do.

FWIW, I have lived in these types of communities, and would not likely purchase a home in one again in my life.

If you root your android phone, you can modify the hosts.conf to block admob.. and there is even a couple of apps in the market to do it automatically... even one that only blocks add if you are in a 3g net but not if you are on wifi.

Try a browser which doesn't identify itself as Safari in its user agent string and does not support webkit's proprietary tags. At least once, please.

AFAIK Chrome doesn't identify itself as Safari. It just identifies that it's webkit.

And as for webkit's tags, they're all open source and submitted to w3c - which, at the end of the day is preferable to waiting for the epically slow w3c to draft their own specs and massively more preferable to using Flash in the mean time.

And as for webkit's tags, they're all open source and submitted to w3c - which, at the end of the day is preferable to waiting for the epically slow w3c to draft their own specs and massively more preferable to using Flash in the mean time.

So in the end you're just re-creating the Flash issue.

Because you can freely read about the Flash spec, the issue is that Adobe change it whenever they want, while screwing up everyone who does not use their implementation. There's the same issue for webkit tags : the spec is freely readable, but people from the webkit project may change it whenever they want...

As you can see every single version identifies itself as Chrome with a few also adding Safari in there.
This is little different to how many other browsers worked when they were new and/or held small market shares.

So in the end you're just re-creating the Flash issue. Because you can freely read about the Flash spec, the issue is that Adobe change it whenever they want, while screwing up everyone who does not use their implementation. There's the same issue for webkit tags : the spec is freely readable, but people from the webkit project may change it whenever they want, and hence...

Only if we're complacent. The technology does need to move forward and much as I dislike Apple on the whole, they're doing a good job with HTML5. Ignoring Apple's enhancements entirely is somewhat like cutting your nose of to spite your face. A better approach would be to adopt with caution.

It's also worth noting that Flash is an open spec, not open source. Where as webkit /IS/ open source thus can be forked at any time if people don't like Apple's direction.

Does anyone know how the advertising world works the television? I mean you have all these different providers (i am trying to draw a parallel) of TV (satellite, cable, fiber, etc...) and all the various companies. and i know you can make deals with, say, Comcast or others to run your ads on there. but are the cable companies "required" to let anyone who wants to use their platform advertise?

Ads are not a new thing, so rules and restrictions on how they work should be in place. The fact that ads have been around for so long and yet an issue like apple saying "thanks for playing" and only letting their stuff run is a gray area. is it illegal? no. is it anti competitive? arguably yes (though i could play devils advocate and win the argument from either point).

I guess what bothers me is the fact that this kind of scenario is a gray area. I am just surprised. Anyone know more on the legal aspect of this? admittedly this is not one of my areas of expertise.

In the USA at least there are no laws (IANAL) that I'm aware of that require a station to broadcast any commercial. it always seems that every once in a while a station will refuse to air an ad due to philosophical differences between the company and what the ad is promoting.

You hear about this far more commonly around election time, classically where Fox will air certain ads and other stations wont (Swift Boats).

I don't think the cable providers have any say in what ads a network can broadcast, and this is why as a Time Warner subscriber I still get my fair share of ads promoting Dish Network.

There are two sides to this, one, Apple can say "we don't know what those other companies are doing with your info, so you can thank us by only allowing companies we approve to advertise." I'm thinking this is more about preventing ads for droid phones appearing on your iphone.. but at the same time, the way google handles peoples private info, apple does have a leg to stand on.

The other is that this is anticompetitive. Which it sure sounds like to me.

Ultimately for me, I just want whatever option will be the least obtrusive, which seems like apps without ads.

Poundsmack has an excellant point. There are rules about advertising and I don't believe you are allowed to discriminate. Remember, airwaves are public property being RENTED by corporations. I dont think these rules have been applied to Internet ads before, but then the Internet wasn't primarily wireless. Apples iPhones are mostly wireless. And before the fanbois get here, remember, the smartphone market is very small right now and Apple is a BIG part of that. And they are using their entrenched product to dictate industry policy. Whats worse is that they are doing it in a discriminatory manner. This may fly in the US for a while, but I bet the EU is gonna get real interested here soon.

What is it with these blog sites now that they have to all report on the same thing with their own biased editorial content thrown in? It doesn't matter now that the site's name is Engadget, Gizmodo, OSNews, etc. They all opinionize on the same thing.

When will we get real editorial content with relevant subject matter that doesn't have a biased view one way or another. Blog stories look more like one big message board post with a bunch of lemmings posting in the comment section like they actually know how to run a business in this capatalistic society. I wish people would get over their fetish of thinking they know what's the best way of selling technology.

I like Apple and all, but if I were CEO I wouldn't have the balls to do what Apple does. What's interesting is that they are able to be hugely sucessfull without restricting other companies from coming in and attempting to replicate their steps(unlike Microsoft of old). It's the reason why so many entities (companies, bloggers, commenters) generate so much Apple friction. They're frustrated that they aren't as nimble to change or create change enough to generate demand.

The day Apple restricts me from buying a competitor's product to enjoy the latest that technology offers is the day I stop buying their stuff.

As far as ads go, why do us geeks care?? The vast majority of us who run Firefox has Adblock Plus. I thought ads were the devil. I'm not happy with iAds or the Admob invading my iSpace.

Why let amateur journalists (bloggers) bait you into building social bunkers around the gadgets you like? I say give them less clicks to force better content but that's not going to happen because people like to complain.

While Apple-phobes get all worked up about Apple protecting people's privacy and responding to a competitive assault by Google based on inside information gained while Google had a seat on Apple's board - this happens and nothing is said around here.

Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake.

But Privacy International (PI) is convinced the audit proves "criminal intent"

"The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation," said PI in a statement.

"The idea that this was a work of a lone engineer doesn't add up. This is complex code and it must have been given a budget and been overseen. Google has asserted that all its projects are rigorously checked," said Mr Davies from Privacy International (PI).

This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added.

The revelation that Google had collected such data led the German Information Commissioner to demand it handed over a hard-disk so it could examine exactly what it had collected.

It has not yet received the data and has extended the original deadline for it to be handed over.

I guess Google really believes in openness - for everyone else on the planet except themselves.

This article is about apple, not about google. Google isn't one monolithic company it's got a bunch of divisions. Wireless network data collection (802.11x) has nothing to do with cellular networks or advertising.

This article is about apple, not about google. Google isn't one monolithic company it's got a bunch of divisions. Wireless network data collection (802.11x) has nothing to do with cellular networks or advertising.

Please - how naive can you be! What - you think Google is just one big happy family and it has a small and unimportant bad apple in its midst (no pun intended).

Grow up.

Google is a huge and successful business which is both ultra secretive about its key asset - its search engine - and which is founded upon the principle of watching what you and everybody else does on the internet. Doesn't that bother you just a bit? And now they are caught harvesting people's data from their wireless networks. Doesn't that bother you just a bit?

This article by the way is a criticial report about Apple's response to Google's competitive attacks. Google have been utterly open about targeting and attacking Apple, Google was on the board of Apple when it was developing the iPhone and whilst it (Google) was building its own phone OS to go up against Apple's. Doesn't that you bother at least a bit?

Now Apple is saying "advertisers you gather the data you want as long as the end user and data owners approve it - but Google you can fuck off". While Apple seems set on protecting the privacy of its customers that's not Google's model which is to gather data without asking and to gather it everywhere.

Why are people here siding with Google? Come on guys - stand up for your principals and don't let prejudice and media hype get in your way.

It was ironic and offensive for Google to use the 1984 reference to attack Apple at its recent IO when its Google that wants to watch everyone.

While Apple-phobes get all worked up about Apple protecting people's privacy and responding to a competitive assault by Google based on inside information gained while Google had a seat on Apple's board - this happens and nothing is said around here.

Of course it won't, because Google are the golden haired child of geekdom at the moment - they can't possibly do wrong. Apple on the other hand are evil incarnate according to that group, because they opt to use internationally recognised STANDARDS in their products, and their business model is self serving. What a hide they have developing a totally self serving business model!

The Australian government is also investigating Google's street view data collection, with the distinct possibility of the matter being turned over to the Federal Police, and there are whispers that there will be a push to also investigate Google's collection of search data and uninvited indexing of web sites for breaches of privacy laws.

As has been pointed out, there are numerous non-tech real world examples of the type of model Apple are employing in each of these areas, but of course it takes some real world knowledge to understand that.

On the other hand, how may people would be ok with someone coming uninvited into their house, going through all their stuff and listing it all on a local community bulletin board along with the address? How many people wouldn't call the police if every time they went to their local supermarket there was someone following them around making note of every product they even look at, or indeed following them around all day every day making note of every type of business and even other individuals that were visiting so that they could make money from that information?

But of course, if you look at this logically, from a real world perspective, you're branded with the war cry of those who have nothing real to support their arguments - APPLE FAN BOY!

While the selection of advertising is self-serving and I understand Apple's goal to enrich themselves, I have to be amused that AdMob's people would tell us that not having other advertisements would hurt us.

I seriously don't see a lack of one group over another group will hurt anyone. Apple's advertisements won't be on Android and Google's advertisements won't be on Apple. That's just...okay, especially if it hurts Apple in the end.

Apple are driven by the news. If they have bad news, they fix something. If they have good news, they gloat. If they have no news, they announce some number. It seems to me that they're digging a hole and if all the fanatics on either side fall into the hole along with their business. I really don't care any longer.

Give me a device with a stable, function-rich operating system and let other people vote with their money.

Is not fair because apple didnt make the app where the adv is gonna be shown.. if apple come with a portal that use google search, they can put their adv there.. no harm done.
If apple wants to use his adv plataform on their apps, ok.. but if any developers want to use admob, they should be able.. apple is taking away the choice of devs choosing their adv revenue.

Apple has been taking choice from devs.. first the language, now the adv.. next? the ownership of the app?

I want a plug-in system for Google Search where I can choose my favorite ad provider!
Not offering that is obviously abuse of Google's search monopoly to drive ad monopoly just like when MS bundled IE without offering alternatives!

You are totally wrong there because google search is a free tool and they have to make money somewhere... but users PAY for the iphone and the os inside, so... why should apple decide where could the devs get their money for their free apps?

Apple has exhibited this same behavior time and time again, and it usually results in Apple losing market share in the interest of preserving high profit margins. It's already happening with Android vs iPhone: Google is selling more smartphones than Apple, and there's little reason to think that that will change. iPhone OS 4 was underwhelming, pretty much everyone yawned.

There is absolutely no reason Google should have access to the information generated through iAD's. Nor should it be a surprise that Apple does not want to give intelligent information to the Android platform or it's not so open developer Google. To think otherwise is to be completely delusional. If Google was really concerned with it's users it would have stayed in China. No this Corporation is out to control the world and it is sucking up the impressionable by the boat load.

Gruber is being a righteous dick about this. He has failed to be critical of this move in any logical way.

Bullshit. Google started this. It was Google that turned its sights on the iPhone. If AdMob had remained independent, they could still sell in-app ads on iOS. If AdMob had sold itself to Apple instead of Google, they could still sell in-app ads on iOS. If Google hadn’t declared war against the iPhone, AdMob could still see in-app ads on iOS. They made their bed, now they have to sleep in it.

There’s no question it’s a dick move on Apple’s part. But what’s the argument against it? That Google gets a pass for being dicks to Apple, and Apple ought to just sit there and take it?

He justifies this as it being Google’s fault for AdMob not being independent! Totally brushing aside the fact that the rule in the first place is the real bullcrap. Apple are not allowing anybody else to play by the same rules as themselves.

While Apple's actions are not exactly noble, it's important to understand properly why they are doing it, there seems to be lots of kneejerk reactions out there.

At one time Apple had a Google member on the board, and the two companies had a friendly relationship. Google then went into direct competition with Apple on the iPhone. You can be sure they are working on an iPad competitor too. Google then jumped in on the AdMod deal and snatched it away from Apple.

So Apple's quite simple viewpoint will be - "why should we allow Google to make money off our platform when they are competing directly against us in the same market". What else are they going to do - leave the door wide open? Remember this isn't a web thing - where openness must be preserved, they are only doing it on the native application platform which they have controlled tightly all along.

Google have their own app platform, they can use their ad platform on that. If the Android market is so much bigger and exploitable than the iPhone market they will make more money than Apple.

Most of you people don't even have a clue what the motive behind this is, or are just being disingenuous.

It has nothing to do with Google being able to make money selling advertising in iPhone apps. Apple doesn't care. It has everything to do with Apple not wanting mobile device competitors (which Google is) with their own analytics arms (which Google has) to be able to use those resources to gain information about unreleased products that Apple is still testing; which is what started this whole brouhaha in the first place when Flurry blabbed about how it detected iPads on the Apple campus before the device was ever officially announced.

This is just Apple being paranoid about competitors spying on their future product plans, and not some devious "this is our sandbox, and you can't play in it" move.

This is just Apple being paranoid about competitors spying on their future product plans, and not some devious "this is our sandbox, and you can't play in it" move.

So you're saying Apple doesn't have the power to control what apps their own employees install during testing of unreleased products?

And Apple has no way to control the information that their prototype phones give out to apps that are installed on them?

I would expect Apple would put some safeguards into their prototype/unreleased products to prevent such a thing from occurring. You make it sound like they're complete idiots and unable to use their own developed products, thus they must write legal terms into their developer agreements to protect themselves from doing stupid things with software written by 3rd parties.